J. Wakefield Brewing breaks crowdfunding record for a U.S. brewery with $112k round

It was a substantial increase over Modern Times Beer’s previous record raise of $65.5k on Kickstarter earlier this year. Modern Times had 645 backers in their campaign while J. Wakefield had 473 backers.

Why $112k? Jonathan Wakefield has already developed a devoted local following as a renowned homebrewer, earning high marks for collaborations on RateBeer, having his beers featured at bars and festivals, and forging relationships with popular commercial breweries like Cigar City and Evil Twin.

The most popular reward that Wakefield offered on Crowdbrewed was a ‘futures’ membership program similar to those offered by Cigar City, The Bruery and others with 290 signing up for that sold out reward.

One backer even spent $5,000 on an all-expenses-paid trip to be part of the J. Wakefield team at the Great American Beer Festival in 2014.

The funds will be used to help turn J. Wakefield into a commercial operation.